The Lost Poems...

Beer, wine, cigarettes, cigars, pain killers, excessive prescription meds, red meat, French fries, potato chips, ice cream, any other fatty foods, soda, vaping (smoking "kool-aid" with nicotine), and in my personal case, cheap pepperoni pizza.  Yep, pizza grease is my essential oil.  Every one of us has some vice that we take a little time for most everyday, that helps us get through each day, but that is detrimental over the course of our life.  That is the idea of this meme.  Yes, many people pretend these vices are not that harmful, and some people are self-aware enough to say, "Yep, this pizza is going to help kill me over the course of my life, but I need it to get through the week."  Or whatever the vice is.  This meme above is one of four I made from this single line, which was a line in one of my Lost Poems.

If you ask most people, "Are you into poetry?"  The general answer will probably be, "Not really."  But if you ask the same person what their favorite song is, or who their favorite rapper is, nearly everyone has an answer.  Song lyrics are a form of poetry, set to music.  Rappers make a living "writin' rhymes."  Raps are poetry.  Sparked by the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" in 1979, and a few others in big afros and tight pants, rapping began to spread into the tough neighborhoods of New York City, and throughout the U.S. Black community soon after.  

A year later, the New York City group Blondie, led by Debbie Harry, introduced white kids across the U.S. to rap music with the song "Rapture."  I remember where I was when I heard an airplane flew into the first of the Twin Towers on 9/11.  I remember where I was when I first met BMX freestyle pros Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo, and Josh White, in an airport in 1986.  I remember where I was when president Ronald Reagan got shot in 1981.  And I remember exactly where I was when I first heard the song "Rapture" in 1980.  I'm not a big rap fan,  I was 13 then.  It would be a few more years before we really heard of rap as a thing, in rural America, but "Rapture" in 1980 gave us a taste of things to come.

Kids on street corners in the hoods of America, in the early 1980's, did what decades of English teachers couldn't do, they made poetry cool... first in New York and L.A., and later worldwide.  

So while I think most rap sucks today, there is definitely some great rap out there, old and new, and poetry is a lot cooler than it was when I was a kid.  I was hanging out at my friend, Tom Conway, at his house, in the country, outside of the small town of Willard, Ohio.  We were in his family room, listening to radio station G-98 out of Cleveland.  As soon as the song "Rapture" was over, Tom and I looked at each other, "What was THAT?" we asked.  Hearing the song for the first time made that much of an impression.  It was something different than any music we'd heard before.  

When poetry does have an effect on someone, it is often a really profound effect.  If you're still not sure that songs can be great poetry, even without the music, listen closely, or read the words to one of these songs: "Because the Night" - Patti Smith/Bruce Springsteen.  "Madman across the Water"- Bernie Taupin/Elton John.  "American Pie" - Don McClean.  "Bat Out of Hell" - Jim Steinman/Meatloaf.  "Jungleland" - Bruce Springsteen/The E Street Band.  "Gimme the Sweet and Lowdown" - Mike Ness/Social Distortion.  "Hi Ren" - Ren.  That's poetry motherfuckers.  Damn good poetry.  It may not be your taste in poetry, but these are good stuff.  By the way, that last song got me starting to write poetry again, after not writing hardly any poetry, for over 15 years.  Thanks Ren.

Creation emanates, light from the sun

In every group that beholds there's one

-excerpt from one of my Lost Poems

In the big Substack post linked at the end of this blog post, you can read about how I started writing poetry in 1987-1988, sparked by my girlfriend at the time.  I kept writing "song lyrics" after we broke up.  Eventually I had 5 or 6 notebooks full of "lyrics," and knew I didn't intend to start a band.  That's when I realized I had become a poet.  That was in 1990 or 1991.  In 1992, inspired by a book of Henry Rollins' poetry a roommate showed me, I published my first poetry zine.  It had 80 or 100 of my poems in it, and the zine was so thick I had to bind each one with duct tape.  For real.  The zine was called, We're on the Same Mental Plane... and it's Crashing.  The first poem was called, "Journey of The White Bear," written the night that girlfriend who inspired me to try and write songs dumped me.  When I published that poetry zine, I got tagged with the nickname, "The White Bear."  I eventually took that as my penname for my poetry.  I published two more, smaller, zines of poetry, Mush in 1996, and The Poet in 1997.  Both of those had 30 or 35 poems each in them.  Between the three zines, I self-published about 130-160 of the poems I wrote between 1988 and 1997.  

The Key

I met a man with a golden key

He said, "Coincidence isn't

As you will see"

He plunged the key into a stream

And I realized all things flow from dreams

He held the key up to the sky

And I realized energy doesn't die...

Excerpt, all I can remember, from "The Key," one of my Lost Poems

I didn't stop writing poetry in 1997.  I kept writing it through the years until late 2008.  I wrote fewer poems, but they were better quality, overall.  Most of them had something to do with trying to make sense with the trials and tribulations of life, and what we're all doing here on this crazy planet.  My poems got longer, averaging 20 to 40 lines, I'd say, instead of maybe 10 to 20 lines, like many of the earlier poems.  

In 2005, while working as a taxi driver, I got an offer to move into an actual indie art gallery, and live there during the week.  The gallery, AAA Electra 99, was in an industrial unit in Anaheim at the time, and the owner was another taxi driver, who owned his cab.  I lived in the gallery with a mama cat and six kittens, Monday morning through Friday afternoon, and drove his taxi on the weekends.  After a couple of years of working seven days a week, 12-18 hours a day, in the taxi, it was a welcome break.  I was totally burned out when I moved into the gallery.  I hadn't done anything creative in two or three years.  At all.  I was completely focused on making money, as the taxi industry went into a downward spiral.  Suddenly, in the gallery all week, I had a lot of time on my hands.  I started drawing pictures with Sharpies after a few days, and my Sharpie Scribble Style drawing technique was born there in the gallery.  

But I did something else as well.  I had a Mac Powerbook laptop, and I started trying to teach myself Final Cut video editing software, so I could get up-to-date, and start making videos again.  That didn't pan out.  What I also did in the gallery was to go through all my notebooks, my personal journals, and to look through all the poems I had written from late 1997 through 2005.  Out of over 200 poems, I had about 165 that I thought were solid poems.  I typed them all into the hard drive of my computer, not sure what I was going to do with them.  So I had the original, handwritten poems in all my journals, and digital copies in my Powerbook.  

Mirror, Mirror

Mirror, mirror, on the wall

Why do you show the worst of all

Why can't you show who I could be

I look at you, but I see me

-The White Bear, excerpt from on of the Lost Poems

Since I was 19, I've published a lot of zines, written or had photos in 8 BMX magazines, wrote a newsletter for the AFA, worked on several TV show crews, made a bunch of BMX, skate and snowboard videos, and written over 2,800 blog posts.  The highest quality creative work I've ever done was in the poems I wrote between 1997 and 2008.  In 2007, because of health issues and lack of business, I walked away from taxi driving, and became fully homeless, in Orange County, California.  I spent a year homeless in SoCal, and eventually took my family's offer to fly me to North Carolina.  They thought I might be able to get going again there.  My parents moved to NC 3 or 4 years after I moved out of their house, in San Jose, in 1986.  My sister followed them east a couple of years later, and finished college there.  She ended up meeting her future husband, and they married and settled down there.  We're all from Ohio originally, so I had absolutely no connection to North Carolina, other than family members living there, and I didn't want to move there.  

But the pressure that gets put on homeless people at times forced me out of California, much to my dismay.  My family flew me to NC in the middle of November of 2008.  Remember 2008?  Yeah, not a good time to find a job, particularly in a place where you have no connections.  The Great Recession (aka GFC or Global Financial Crisis) was in full collapse mode then.  

I was promised a loan of about $150 to catch up my storage unit payments in Cali, and get my laptop out of the pawn shop, and have someone ship my stuff to me.  when I went to NC.  I flew there with a bookbag sized backpack, and that's it.  All my BMX stuff, a Dyno race bike I'd been riding, all the raw footage and master tapes of videos I'd produced, all my BMX magazines (including a full set of FREESTYLIN' magazines), my videos and DVD's, and all the notebooks with originals of my poems, were in my 5' X 5' storage unit.  That loan I'd been promised was quickly dismissed after getting to NC, and I had no way to come up with money there.  I lost everything I owned, my entire BMX history, except for my Haro brake lever key chain.  I went instantly into a deep depression.  

What surprised me was that, of everything I lost, the poems were what bothered me the most.  I stopped writing poetry.  I couldn't find a job, and I lived with my parents at age 42, in a small two bedroom apartment, for a year or two.  I couldn't get away from North Carolina for nearly ten years.  I never did find a "real job" there.  It was the spring of 2019 when I finally made it back home to California.  I've lived in a couple dozen cities and towns in six states, but Southern California is the only place that ever felt like home to me.  In 2008, in North Carolina, I stopped writing poetry.  The poems just didn't seem to come anymore.  

My sister had copies of two of my poem books, and she gave me those.  Those got lost in another move in NC.  That was totally my fault.  So I've managed to lose all copies of the 150 or so poems I've published in zines, and the 165, much better quality poems, I wrote between late 1997 and 2008.  I also lost well over 100 not-so-great poems that I wrote as well.  So these few poems in the previous posts, and the handful I linked in the last post, are the few remaining poems I have, out of 400 to 500 I've written.  So that's the story of my "Lost Poems."  

The lesson here, if you do any kind of creative work of any decent quality, GET IT OUT IN PEOPLE'S HANDS, even if you have to give it away.  It is possible to lose all your creative work.  It happened to me.  

Back in 2008, bored and severely depressed, and living in my parents' spare bedroom, in a tiny town in North Carolina, I had 24/7 access to a computer, and decent internet, for the first time in my life.  For a couple weeks, I "surfed the web" and watched a ton of porn.  Then I started blogging.  Somewhere around 1,500 to 1,700 of the blog posts I've written since are in this blog, and spread across more that 25 other blogs, sitting out there, on the web.  I've got over 200 original drawings and copies of drawings in many U.S. states, and over a dozen foreign countries.  I haven't made a living doing all this work.  I did it because I love doing, and this is what I do.  This is who I am.  I'll keep putting out the best work I can, for as long as I can, and hopefully make a living at it some day.  Either way, I'll keep doing the best creative work I can in whatever situation I'm in.  

I started spending my Pizza Hut pay to self-publish zines in 1985.  It took until 2008, but I finally got over my Luddite-ism, and figured out how fucking cool the internet is.  I've been using it the best I can to create pretty cool content ever since.  I've made some money selling drawings, selling over 100 original drawings in the last 8 years.  But what I've made is nowhere close to making a living.  I'll keep plugging along at this as long as I'm able to.  And I'll put out work for free, if that's the only way to get it out so some audience that may appreciate it.  I'll make money at this work when I'm able to.  That's what I learned by losing over 300 of the Lost Poems.  When you do decent creative work, get it out to people, whether you get paid or not.  

I recently wrote a big post on my Substack about poetry, and how I became a poet.  If that sounds interesting, check it out.  

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

 

"Love Lies Bleeding" and a the few other surviving poems of mine

 Poet and donut connoisseur.  Me with a light snack from Randy's Donut's in Hollywood, 2019.  

After writing the big Substack post about how I became a poet (linked below), I got a nasty leg infection, and couldn't get online for a while.  I've been getting to the library to get online for a while the last few days, from the recuperative place I'm in for the time being.  As I said in the Substack post, I've written somewhere around 400 to 500 poems in my life.  I published about 150 of them, total, in three zines, which came out in 1992, 1996, and 1997.  But I lost all of my copies of those zines, and all the handwritten originals, and other copies.  I lost ten years worth of my unpublished poetry in a move to North Carolina in 2008.  More on that in the next post.  

I've written some really stupid poems, some funny poems, some sarcastic poems, a bunch of mushy love poems (in the late 80's, and early 90's), and a lot of pretty decent, philosophical, "what's life all about?" type poems.  I don't memorize my poems, in most cases.  So most of those 400 to 500 are lost, unless one or more of my poetry zines show up somewhere.  There's a few still out there, in a box in a closet or attic, somewhere.  

In addition to the few poems in the last several posts, here are links to a few more of the better poems I've written since 2008, when I pretty much stopped writing poetry.  These 10 or 15 poems, here and in the previous posts, are all I have left, at this point.  

"Love Lies Bleeding" - 2018

"Life: What will you do?" - 2018

"The Douchebag's War Cry"- 2023

"Freaks, Geeks, Dorks, and Weirdos" - 2023

"Ode to the word FUCK" - 2007  

(This one is a comedy bit/poem, and I do have it memorized, but have only performed it for a handful of people)

I recently wrote a big post about writing poetry and how I became a poet on my Substack.  If that sounds interesting, check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

"Is there a need for art?" - New poem in 2024

 Photo of one of my favorite graffiti pieces I saw in Hollywood, in 2021, I think.  Is it art?  Everyone has their opinion, but I dig this piece.  #steveemigphotos.

Is there a need for art?

The truth out there is plain to see

Yet humans continue to disagree

Sitting on a rock on a hill, enjoying the view

Of the city below, where humans do what they do

The good, the heroic, the evil and mean, 

The city is the place of human fears and dreams

Though we still can't place where cities got their start

I asked out loud, "Is there a need for art?"

Take away Roman columns, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek plays, 

Would it matter how humans spend their days?

Take away cave paintings, ivory etchings, and architecture grand

Would humans still see the guidance of a Creator's hand?

What if the music of a million years had never been heard?

No books, no movies, no poems spoken, only everyday words

What if every spark of inspiration had just fizzled dead?

Would civilization have happened, if all the great ideas had been left unsaid?

The answer is obvious, a definite, "No!"

Without arts of all kinds, there would be nowhere to go

So despite all the pain, all the hate, all the war

Perhaps there's a reason that we're all here for

Perhaps there's a reason actors act and singers sing

There's a reason novelists and poets are seeking something

It's why designers design and movies get made

Why directors direct, and put on their plays

Perhaps it's all part, of a story grand and strong

Playing out over the eons, a span longer than long

Is there a purpose to Art?  An enthusiastic "Yes!" I declare

Music, dance, and stories are always found there

This truth came to me, on a rock on a hill

The grand story of humankind... creativity, drama, and free will

-The White Bear

I just wrote this one, in January 2024, while laid up in a sketchy-ass homeless recuperative center, where I couldn't access social media, write on my blog, and was listening to other people's music and chatter for over a week.  There's such a strong surge of censorship being pushed onto social media and online platforms these days, by certain groups who hate books, art, and most of makes life interesting, that's it's like this continuous under current of hate and negativity.  I've written very few poems in the last 16 years, and this one came out pretty messy, when it came time to write it down.  But it captures a lot of what I feel these days, being creative in my own unique ways, in a world where there's so many forces coming down on arts of many different kinds, because they don't conform to certain ideologies.  

I recently wrote a big post on my Substack about poetry, writing poems, and becoming a poets decades ago.  If that sounds interesting, check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

"AirFireEarthWater" and "Quotes"- Two of my poems from the early 1990's

 This is me as a cameraman for Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear video company, back in 1989.  This photo was taken 3-5 years before this poem was written, but I don't have any photos handy of myself in the early or mid 1990's.

AirFireEarthWater

A FEW there that find the path

A FEW there be that hear the call

A FEW there be that wake up to

The mystery and wonder of it all

-The White Bear

This poem above was written somewhere between 1993-1997, when I was reading and digging into religion, spirituality, mysticism, the Rosicrucians, Pythagoras, the mystical meaning of the 3-4-5 right triangle, and other weird shit like that.  This poem was in either my 2nd or 3rd poetry zine, Mush (1996) or The Poet (1997), I'm not sure which.  Around the same time I also came up with this little poem/saying.

Quotes

I read the businessmen's quotes

And they quoted the philosophers

 I read the philosophers' quotes

And they quoted the mystics

I read  the mystics' quotes

And they quoted Nature

So I walked out into the woods

And found that everything quotes God

-The White Bear

I recently wrote a big post on my Substack about poems, writing poetry, and how I became a poet.  If that sounds interesting, check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

"Play" - poem from the early 1990's-

 

If the world's a stage, show it what you got.  Street performing dance team, The Damn Team, who used to perform right next to where I would sell artwork on Hollywood Boulevard.  2019.  #steveemigphotos

Play

The world's a stage

Just grand in scale

Drama erupts

From our travails

It's one Great Play

Go find your part

Some day you'll realize

The world is Art

-The White Bear

written somewhere between 1992-1996

I just wrote a bunch of my ideas on poetry and becoming a poet on my Substack.  If that sounds interesting, check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

"Become"- short poem from the early 1990's...

 

Wall ride over my sister Cheri's head, Blues Brothers Wall in Huntington Beach, 1990.  These two poems were written in the early 90's, the height of my BMX riding days.

Become

You must risk

If you're to succeed

For when you grow

Sometimes you bleed

Each much climb

Over the fence, 

For the only cage

Is Ignorance

Each Jedi knight 

And Shaolin monk

evolved from 

A lowly punk

Don't get caught

In the world's throws

We must become

Our own heroes

-The White Bear

I just wrote a big Substack post about writing poetry (before my recent stay in the hospital), if that interests you, check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

Jezebel- a poem about a weird punker chick I dated in 1989

 This is me carving a line in the Nude Bowl, in the spring of 1990, a few months after writing this poem.  The Nude Bowl is an abandoned swimming pool out in the middle of the desert, legendary in the BMX and skateboard worlds, in the Palm Springs area.  It's a relic from a 1970's era nudist colony.  I have very few pics of myself from that era, so this will have to do.  Video still from The Ultimate Weekend, my 1990 BMX video.

In late 1989, I dated this weird punker chick who used to hang out at the Huntington Beach Pier on the weekends, where a handful of us BMX freestylers would hang out and session.  It wasn't a serious relationship, I think she dated me mostly for the food, I took her out to Denny's almost every night.  

She was really weird, and told us a different name nearly every time we saw her, for the first several weeks she started hanging out.  We took to calling her Jezebel, I'm not sure why.  We listened to The Cure a lot while hanging out, and she liked to watch horror flicks.  The one thing I will say about her, this weird punker chick had an amazing rapport with animals.  She had a rat that would drink off of her (or my) tongue.  The thing that really freaked me out, though, is that she would cuddle with my roommate's 25 pound, mean as hell cat.  I never even petted the cat, in two years of living in that apartment.  I still managed to get bit by it once.  But, within five minutes of walking in the living room, Silus the furry, mean, basketball of a cat was on his back, in her lap, and she was rubbing its belly.  My roommate, who owned the cat, could rub its belly maybe once a month, without getting bit.  So she was a really weird, kind of interesting, very crazy punker chick.  But she had an incredible way with animals.  Near the end of of our short relationship, I wrote this poem.  I was probably kind of drunk, I can't remember.  I wanted to break it up, but was kind of worried since she was kind of suicidal at times.  I wrote this poem when I was thinking about how to break up with her.

Looking back, I think this is the oldest poem of mine that has survived, unless someone finds a copy of my first poetry zine, We're on the same Mental Plane... and it's Crashing.  This poem was in that zine, which I published in 1992.  But there were poems in it going back to 1988, when I really started writing a lot of poetry.  Obviously, it's not a great poem, but since I memorized this one, I still had it, when I lost nearly all of the 400-500 poems I've written, in a move in 2008.  In my head, the way I would read it, the rhythm of this poem goes to the tune of the song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."  Yeah, not the best relationship when that's the song that comes to mind while thinking about it.  

Jezebel

The words that I want, well they just aren't around

And I can't look into your eyes

What we once felt, I don't see anymore

Like a ship when the fog fills the skies

The moments they come, and the moments they go

But the right moment just won't come 'round

I can't go on feeling just how I do, and I can't risk leaving you down

You're all that I wanted, before I knew what I had

And without you I'd never have known it

You captured what little love I had inside, even though I may not have shown it

But here we are now, in the dark and the gray, two rowboats adrift in the mist

And maybe our paths, they will cross once again, if not this world than in the next

-The White Bear

I just wrote a big post with thoughts about poems, and writing poetry, on my Substack.  Check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

Mystery Machine- a poem about that van we all watched as a kid

 Scooby-Doo was my  favorite cartoon as a kid, and I come from Generation X.  We were the kids who spent every Saturday morning in the 1970's as a kid, lying on our stomachs, four feet from the TV, eating our cereal, watching 3 or 4 hours of cartoons, and weird live action kids' shows (like this one).  

Many years ago I was talking to some friends, as adults now, we were trying to figure out just what was going on in that van back then, for the whole week between shows.  They had to be smoking some weed.  It was the 1960's and 1970's, and Shaggy and Scooby were always hungry.  That conversation led to me writing this poem, speculating on what happened back then, in the back of this van.  Here's what I came up with.  

Mystery Machine

Here's a ghost, there's a witch, Scooby's looking for a bitch, 

Shaggy's hiding in the kitchen with a big sandwich

Spooky green, it's a crazy scene

In the back of the Mystery Machine

The van's slower than molasses, Velma lost her glasses

Shaggy's in the back seat, checking out their asses

Spooky green , it's a crazy scene

In the back of the Mystery Machine

It's a van dogpile doing Daphne doggy-style

Velma's got a mouthful of Fred, all the while

Spooky green, it's a crazy scene

In the back of, the Mystery Machine

-The White Bear

I just wrote a big post on my Substack about poems, and my thoughts on writing poetry.  Check it out:

Steve Emig the White Bear's Substack

"California Bitch" and the other "punk songs" I wrote lyrics for in the late 1980's

The Ultimate Weekend, my first self-produced BMX video.  In 1990, after working for 2 1/2 years at Unreel Productions, the Vision Skateboards video company, I wanted to make a  BMX freestyle video that showed "real riding."  Only a handful of BMX freestyle videos had come out, up until that point.  But the wave of early prosumer video equipment made producing my own BMX video possible.  For the first time, average people could produce their own videos.  Armed with my $1,100 S-VHS video camera, I spent about 8 months shooting footage on weekends, and $5,000 of my own money to produce The Ultimate Weekend.  At the time, it was a pretty good rider-made video, the best edited of the bunch at the time.  In the process, I hada punk band called The Stain, from Ohio, produce and record two "punk songs" of lyrics I had written.  Thanks to Jon Stainbrook, Mark Mickel, and Jeff Kollman, John from Government Issue, and friends, for humoring me, and making these highly questionable songs happen.

"Cottage Cheese Disease" - 10:39 (in video above)- In 1988, 1989 and beyond, I wrote lyrics to a bunch of "punk songs."  My friend Mike, a Huntington Beach Pier local, Mike, started taking me to punk rock shows, and properly introducing me to punk music.  I was already writing poems at the time, after dating a woman who was the lead singer in a local band. I didn't tell anyone about the poetry slowly filling notebooks in my closet.  

The punk songs were just other ideas that I'd get, and write down, funny, sarcastic little ideas.  I never really wanted to start a band, I just liked making up fucked up, funny songs.  At one point, I started writing a series of short stories that included a fictional punk band called U.I., Unpardonably Ignorant, a line from the book Think and Grow Rich. In those stories, the characters would reference the band, and my songs were the band's songs.  But those stories never got finished.  

"Cottage Cheese Disease" was what a former roommate of mine called women's cellulite.  We were riding at the the H.B. Pier one weekend, and some large woman walked by in a smaller than necessary swimsuit, and I made a joke "Whoa, she got the cottage cheese disease."  Over the next hour or so it turned into a song.  I thought of it as a song, not a rap.  But when The Stain took it, they turned it into a rap.  Now, 35 years later, I'm fat from my years working as a taxi driver, and have my own cottage cheese disease.  Karma got the last laugh.  

"Mom's Imagination" -  44:07 (in the video above)- For this song, I was thinking back to high school in Boise, when I was just getting into freestyle.  My mom had a pretty good imagination when it came to what I was up to.  I was a shy dork getting shot down by pretty much every girl I talked to at parties, yet my mom always seemed to think that when I came home on the weekends, I'd been to a full blown drunken orgy or something.  My best friend in high school, Darrin, and I used to joke about this.  One day I laughed, "Man, I wish my life was half as great as my mom's imagination."  He laughed, "Yeah, no shit."  The line stuck in my head, and I turned it into these song lyrics.  The Stain, again, turned it into an actual song.  What I like about this song is that "Mom's Imagination" actually sounds like a song you might here in a show by a young punk band.  

"California Bitch" lyrics

Refrain

She's a... California bitch 

in her bleach blond hair

California bitch  

but I don't care

California bitch

in her Cabriolet

California bitch... No way!

Daddy pays the rent

She has a good time

Party with her friends

Maybe do a few lines

Find a new guy 

'cause she's got an itch

She's a California...

She's a California... BITCH!

Refrain 

There was another verse or two, I can't remember them now.  "California Bitch" was written about the hot, stuck-up, blond girls that we'd try to talk to at the beach, and who would either ignore us, or make fun of us.  A lot of them drove convertible Volkswagen Cabriolets then, that was the trendy, stuck-up, blond, rich girl car then.  Being a BMX freestyler was definitely not cool in the 1980's, and most of the hot girls walking by would totally blow us off.  So "California Bitch" was my "Fuck you bitch" song to all of the hot girls who waned nothing to do with me.

I've been doing a lot of writing lately about creativity, art, writing, Creative Scenes, and stuff like that on a platform designed for writers, called Substack.  Check it out.  You can even subscribe for free, and get each post sent to your email.  

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

New Poem: "The Douchebag's Warcry"

 This was inspired by all the censorship on social media and online platforms these days, and by the people who seem bound and determined to keep so many new and creative ideas from spreading in today's world.  Overhearing one conversation in particular sparked the idea.  There are many names for people who work to censor, attack, downplay anything creative that they don't like.  But I call these people douchbags, generally.  This poem is NSFTMC... Not Safe For The Metaphorically Challenged.

The Douchebag's Warcry

Kill the artist

That's what we must do

Silence the writer

Who speaks what's true

Blind the visionary

Who shows us hope

Hang the sculptor

From a very short rope

Stab the photographer

Who shows us what we miss

Make them feel the venom

And hear the snakes hiss

Muffle the poet

With his flowery nonsense

Light fire to the circus

Burn every one of the tents

Take the filmaker's camera

Steal the rapper's mike

Rid the world of musicians

Ban those I don't like

What's happened to society?

Let the great scourge start

In the name of the Creator

Kill all the creative arts

-The White Bear

3/10/2023

I've got a new blog now, check it out

Small Business Futurist

New poem: Freaks, Geeks, Dorks, and Weirdos

 Freaks, Geeks, Dorks, and Weirdos

I am the Jester, the Joker, the one outside the pack

I am made up of... all the things that I lack

I am the refuse, the rubbish, one of the many cast aside

I am the roaming lion, driven out of the pride

I put the ooze in Loser, I put the ash in White Trash

I am the beggar that you laugh at, I am the weak one that you smash

I lived through years of terror, I became a creature of the streets

I roam among the vampires and zombies, I know the junkies, the thugs, and the cheats

You've spent years trying to squash me, I've been beaten black and blue

I've been threatened, scorned, accosted, you spread stories about me that aren't true

I am an artist, writer, creator, I do what you can't do

I catch thoughts and escort them, into the three dimensional world

I see the dark things lurking in the night

Yet I burn like a flame, I create my own light

I am the artist, musician, builder, I craft and forge all that's new

I am the freaks, geeks, dorks, and weirdos, I am here on Earth to do

Your words no longer harm me, your attacks prove that you're weak

I am a ranger of the wild side, though I once was shy and meek

Your attacks have beaten and forged me, like a samurai swordsman's blade

I am a warrior wordsmith, I leave my blood on every page

From the garbage heaps and ghettos, visionaries crawl and fight

We are born in the children, who survive terrors in the night

We ask better questions, we go deeper than others dare

We bring new ideas to life... lost in a blank stare

No army can stop great ideas, no navy can sink a song

We are the creators of great beauty, and you keep telling us we're wrong

In the times of great upheaval, when your might empires fail

We are the ones who rebuild, only then you tell our tales

We are the freaks, geeks, dorks, and weirdos, we tell the stories, we make the art

The ones you mocked as children, the pain of yesteryear gave us our start

When you're sad, you listen to us, when you're depressed, our work lifts you up

We are the fountains of creation, when you thirst, you drink from our cup

I am the Jester and the Joker, I live outside the deck

I am the force of the Creator, I keep the world in check

I am the freak, geek, dork and weirdo, I'm the one you mock and scoff

And I've got a lot of work to do, so why don't you go fuck off!

-The White Bear

(Steve Emig- The White Bear- February 2023)

The White Bear rides again... as a poet anyhow

 It's a sketchy video still from The Ultimate Weekend, but this is me doing a double peg grind on a ledge in Huntington Beach, in the summer of 1990.  The crazy part about this photo is that this is either the 2nd or 3rd double peg grind on street in a BMX video...ever.  The first one was Dennis McCoy in "Ride Like a Man," which came out about the time I shot this video.  My self-produced video, The Ultimate Weekend came out in October of 1990.  I did this peg grind in the video, the Keith Treanor did a couple later in time, and in the video, including the first handrail slide down steps in a video.  This was one of the few times I was ahead of the curve on a fundamental trick, and a street trick, at that.  This shot is about halfway between when I wrote "The Journey of the White Bear" poem, in 1988, and when I published it in 1992, when I got The White Bear as my nickname.

In 1987, I started writing "song lyrics" for a girlfriend who was in a local rock band, hoping to write her a hit song.  I was working officially as the editor of the AFA newsletter, then, and she was the person who began to convince me that I was a writer.  So writing her a hit song is seemed ot make sense at the time.  Of course, that never happened.  

When she dumped me in the spring of 1988, I wrote a poem that night called "The Journey of The White Bear."  In the poem, I was The White Bear, a young, naive dork from "The North" (Idaho), who moved to the  "Big City" of Southern California, then hooked up with The Black Leopard (wild, experienced, somewhat older woman) who schooled me on the wilder side of life.  The term "cougar" for an older woman dating a younger man didn't exist back then, that term popped up around 2003 or so.  IN addition, she was just 5 years older than me, though there's a big difference between a dorky 20 year old guy, and 25-year-old former model who liked to party.  

The white and black were metaphors for being naive, and being wild and experienced at life, they had nothing to do with race.  Unfortunately, in today's world, I have to make that disclaimer.  That was the first pretty good set of "lyrics" I wrote.  After the break up, I was used to writing "song lyrics," and found they were the cheapest form of therapy to begin working through all my personal issues, like extreme shyness and low self esteem.  So I kept writing "song lyrics."  I wrote them on what ever scrap of paper I could find if I wasn't at home.  If I was home, I wrote them in a spiral pad labeled, "Just some stuff I wrote."  If not at home, I copied them into the notebook later on.  

In time, I had several "Just some stuff I wrote" notebooks.  They were all hidden in a box, under some other stuff, on the top shelf of my closet.  I really didn't want my roommates, or anyone, finding those writings.  I never meant for anyone to ever see them, unless I actually started a band and made songs out of some of them.  At some point, I looked at the 4 or 5 notebooks of "song lyrics," and realized that I didn't have a band, I didn't play any instruments, and I wasn't going to start a band.  "I have a whole bunch of poems... I'm a poet," I finally admitted to myself.  In 1989, being a poet wasn't cool.  So I just kept writing poetry, and hiding it from everyone.  

Finally, in 1992, when I was sleeping on the living room floor of Chris Moeller's tiny Huntington Beach apartment, where he ran S&M Bikes out of the one car garage, I had my poetry notebooks in a box, in a storage unit.  One day, someone gave Chris a copy of Henry Rollins' book of poetry, Black Coffee Blues.  Chris thought it was great, and let me check it out.  I read through his poetry, and while it was raw, I didn't really connect to much of it.  Instead, my thought was, "I could write a book like this."  Then I thought of my notebooks full of poetry.  The next thought was, "Wait, I have written a book like this."  I started reading through the 7 or 8 notebooks of "Just some stuff I wrote," and typing up the best poems.  

Over the course of a couple of months, in 1992, I typed up and published a zine about 80 zine pages thick, which is 40 sheets of typing paper.  It was so thick I had to bind it with duct tape.  Seriously, duct tape.  It was my first poetry zine, and I titled it We're on the Same Mental Plane... and it's Crashing.  Yeah, I was pretty much always depressed in those days, except when riding my bike.  It scared the hell out of me, to publish me really personal poems, but I made about 20 copies, and handed them out to friends, starting with Chris and a few BMX people.  I also gave a few to family members, and to a couple of friends on the American Gladiators crew.  That's where I worked that summer.  Much to my surprise, people were pretty supportive.  Chris started calling me The White Bear all the time, after the first poem in the zine.  The nickname stuck, and I later took it as my poetry pen name.  

I kept writing poetry, and journaling, and putting out more typical zines, once in a while, through the early 1990's.  I put out two more zines of poetry, "Mush" in 1996, and "The Poet" in 1997.  Each of those was smaller, with 35-40 poems each.  By that time, I was writing some pretty solid poetry, and to this day, the best creative work I've done is my poetry.  When I first started writing poetry in 1987, I filled up six or seven legal pads of crap, just horrible attempts at "song lyrics."  I threw all that crap away.  After that, between 1988 and 2008, I wrote at least 400 to 500 poems.  I published somewhere around 100 poems of those poems in my the three poetry zines.  

By 2008, I had another 165 really solid poems, written between 1997 and 2008.  I had the hand written copies in my journals, in my storage unit.  I had also typed all of them up in my laptop, a Mac Powerbook that I bought to learn digital video editing.  I was not into the internet then, and never got online once with that computer.  I planned to get back into editing BMX videos with it, and was slowly trying to teach myself Final Cut Express edit software, while driving a taxi 80 hours a week.  Then taxi driving died, I kept getting a bad leg infection called cellulitis, and had to quit driving a cab in 2007.  

I had been living in my taxi for most of the years 2003 to 2007.  When I quit, I walked out onto the streets of Orange County, California, with $15 in my pocket.  My health was so bad then, I actually expected to die within maybe six weeks.  Obviously I didn't die, and I lived homeless, wandering around Orange County and L.A. County, for almost a year.  I couldn't find a job, and I couldn't get any little business going to start making decent money again.  By late 2008, as the Great Recession walloped the economy, my family offered to fly me to North Carolina.  

We grew up in mostly in Ohio, until I finished 8th grade, and then wound our way west, through two states, then to San Jose, California, after I graduated high school.  I had never lived in North Carolina, I didn't want to move there.  But my parents and my sister's family wound up living there by the 2000's.  They offered to fly me there "for a while."  I figured I'd stay through the holidays, and then somehow head back to California.  I went to NC with a little backpack and a few clothes, and that's it.  My whole life, all my BMX magazines, videos, master tapes, and all my poetry, and a Dyno BMX bike, were in my storage unit.  I arranged to pay a couple of guys to ship it to me once I got back east.  My Mac Powerbook was in a pawn shop, I planned to have that shipped to me as well.  I just needed to borrow about $150 from my family once I got to North Carolina, and they said that was cool.  

So I flew to North Carolina in mid-November of 2008.  After a couple of weeks, staying in my parents' tiny apartment, bored out of my skull, I asked my mom to borrow the money, and get my stuff shipped to me.  She said, "Oh we don't have money for that."  And that was that.  In my family, that kind of thing happened over and over throughout my life.  Again, it was November of 2008, the economy was in full collapse mode, and I couldn't find any job there.  I had no way to make any money in the tiny town we were in.  So I lost all my BMX stuff, most of my clothes, and 165 or so unpublished poems, the best ones I'd ever written.  Most of my poems are pretty long, and I almost never memorized them.  A few copies of my poem zines were around, but those have since been lost, by me.  So I wound up left with about a dozen of my shorter, crappier poems, the few I did memorize for some reason.  

After that, poetry just didn't come to me anymore.  I think I wrote 3 poems between late 2008 and January 2023.  The Poet in me left the building.  I came to call all of the 400 to 500 poems I lost "The Lost Poems."  I remembered a couple lines, here and there, of a few of them.  But the best stuff I had ever written, anywhere, was all gone in 2008.  

I went into a really deep, near suicidal depression in 2008, in North Carolina.  But writing ended up saving me, in a completely unexpected way.  I had pretty much ignored "that internet thing" from when I first heard of it in 1994, until late 2008.  I didn't have my own computer, I was living in my taxi when I did have one, so I just never learned anything about the internet.  I got a Google Gmail account, and would check it, and google a couple of things, every week or so at the library in Huntington Beach.  I actually started a taxi driver blog in 2007, but it sucked, and no one read it.  That was it.  

When I wound up in my parents' apartment, in late 2008, in a tiny town in North Carolina, their computer was in my new, little bedroom.  That was the first time I had free, open, access to the internet, ever.  So I did what everyone else did a decade earlier, I started looking up web porn.  After a couple of weeks of that, I started "surfing the web," as we called it back then.  I just looked up whatever popped in my head, and one search led to another.  We all know how that goes now.  

I found a copy of the FREESTYLIN' magazine book that Andy Jenkins, Mark "Lew" Lewman, and Spike Jonze put out earlier that year.  Along with a few other short term employees at Wizard Publications, I wasn't mentioned in it, at all.  There wasn't even a "and this guy Steve worked here for a while, he made cool zines, but he was a dork."  Nothing.  They didn't mention Steve Giberson, Don Toshach, Mark Snavely, Jim Cassimus, and a few other freelancers, either.  

I wasn't really seeking revenge, though being completely left out pissed me off.  But I decided to write  a blog about my time at FREESTYLIN', just to say, "Hey, I was there, too, for a little while.  Here are a few little stories of my time at the legendary magazines."  At that time, I didn't know about online communities, I didn't connect with anyone online.  Social media was still really new then, and most adults weren't on it.  So I created FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales blog, and started writing little stories of my time working at the magazine, back in 1986.  In my mind then, I thought I was just sending these little stories out into a big black hole that was "the internet."  I had no idea how posts and sites were found by search engines, and had no idea if anyone would ever read them.  I was just completely depressed, bored out of my skull, living with my parents at age 42, and I needed something to do, night after night.  So I began to blog.  

After about a month, one of my blog posts went viral in the Old School BMX online community.  I didn't even know there was an Old School BMX online community.  A well known freestyler contacted me, one I didn't really know in the 1980's.  Then a couple of old friends from the 80's contacted me, by email, I think, back then.  They all told me, "Keep writing these stories, they're cool."  So I kept blogging, struggling with the technology, which intimidated me, but loving the actual writing.  I kept re-connecting with riders I hadn't heard from in many years, and they told me to keep blogging.  My "blogging career" began, and it gave me a reason to keep going in life, in general.

Now it's 14 1/2 years later, I've written over 2,500 blog posts across more than 25 blog ideas I've tried, and they have raked in over 450,000 total page views.  With out realizing it in 2008, I kind of pioneered, by accident, an Old School BMX Freestyle focused media.  There were solid BMX websites then, like Ride BMX, Fat BMX, and others, that covered some Old School freestyle stuff.  But I was the first guy completely focused on that era, so all the Old School freestylers online started reading my blog, and the later ones, like Freestyle BMX Tales, then they discussed it between themselves, and later on Facebook and other social media.  Then the Old School BMX reunion began soon after, and later came all the cool podcasts, when lots of people began to share their own stories from the 1980's and 1990's BMX world.  

My life has been a time of far more writing than I ever did back in the 80's, while struggling to find a real job, or any other way to make a decent living again.  That's a whole different story.  Fast forward until a couple of weeks ago.  Old School U.K. freestyler, Alex Leech, shared a music video on Facebook by a young guy named Ren, called "Hi Ren."    It's an amazing, raw, incredible song, performance, and video, in my opinion.  That sent me down a rabbit hole, digging into Ren's other music online.  There's a lot of it, and it's nearly all amazing.  I'm already an incredibly prolific blogging and Sharpie artist.  But this video got me rethinking all my creative work, and trying some new ideas.  

But most inspiring, "Hi Ren" is some incredibly well written, raw, and deep rapping.  It's great rhymes about a serious subject.  That's rare.  He took on a huge, serious, hard topic, and did a great job.  His rhymes in "Hi Ren" reminded me, to some extent, of my own better poetry.  I usually wrote about pretty deep themes, and my poems always had a rhythm to them, so they could be rapped.  That's just the way I write.  And as crazy as it sounds, I've written as many, if not more rhymes, than guys like Eminem, Jay-Z, Ice T, or whomever.  

While I'm not a rapper, I've written a shitload of rhymes, about deep stuff, and "Hi Ren" got me motivated to try and write some good rhymes, some good poems, again.  Two days later, I woke up with an idea, and wrote a 76 line poem, while sitting on the side of a building (since I'm homeless), when it was about 45 degrees outside.  When poems come, to me, I have to write them, pretty much right then.  In my experience, you don't write good poems, you catch good poems.  I'll get thinking about an idea, and then I'll go on to other things, and my sub-conscious takes over.  Usually, between 2 or 3 and several days later, I get an idea for the first couple of lines of a poem, somehting to do with that theme.  I have to sit down, quick, and write it down.  Or the idea just flies off somewhere else, and I lose it.  Maybe it goes on to another poet, like Elizabeth Gilbert spoke about in her epic TED Talk.  A couple of days ago, I wrote another big long poem.  

So, after a 14 1/2 year hiatus of not writing poems, the thing that got me the nickname, The White Bear, I have begun to write poems again.  That's cool.  Poems are intense, and most poems don't connect to very many people.  But when a person finds a poem they like, it usually really makes an impression on them.  

So the point of this overly long post is that "The White Bear" rides again, as a poet, at least. I've begun to write poetry again, and I'll put those first two poems in this blog soon.  They are both on my Patreon site already, and I've shared them with a handful of creative people on my social media lists.  I have no idea where these will lead, but it's something new, or old, that's happening in my creative work.  There's more to come.  

I've got a new blog now, check it out:

Small Business Futurist

That time I lived in an indie art gallery

The guy talking in this video is Richard Johnson, long time taxi driver, indie gallery owner (at the time), gifted storyteller, poker player, and self-proclaimed "fame-ass arteest."  Richard's one weird and great character, and he offered me a uniquedeal back in 2005, because he needed someone to drive his taxi on the weekends.  I took the offer, and wound up living in AAA Electra 99 gallery, where my creativity was reborn, and my Sharpie Scribble Style art technique was invented.   

With the turn of the new millennium, in January of 2000, came a tough time in my life.  After an injury, I quit my good paying, Hollywood lighting tech job, in late spring of 1999, and took time off to get a needed minor surgery. My insurance was all screwed up, I couldn't see a doctor, or get the surgery.  I looked for a new way to make a living, without heavy lifting, and became a taxi driver in the Huntington Beach, California area.  I was living three blocks from the ocean, in downtown H.B. at the time, and one of my neighbors told me, "Some taxi driver told me he makes $300 a day."  "OK," I thought, "that sounds good, so I gave it a shot."  I soon found out it was a really hard way to make a living.  I learned you could make $300 on a really good Saturday.  But you had to pay $115 of that to the taxi company, and spend another $35-$40 for gas.  And that was the best day of the week for driving.  

I scraped by for a couple of months, driving a cab at Orange County (aka John Wayne) Airport, working seven, 17 hour days, while dressed in black slacks,  white shirt, and a tie..  I looked like a waiter, and made about $300 a week take home money, if I was lucky.  I started hanging out at the downtown bar scene in Huntington Beach on weekend nights, to make extra money driving drunk people home.

I couldn't afford to pay rent anymore, after about two months.  I wound up moving out of my apartment, putting all my stuff in storage, and living in my cab, in about October or November of 1999.  I also quit driving at the airport, and became a "street driver."  I could wear shorts and a T-shirt, and I had to find most of my own business, while paying the taxi company $600 a week to lease the cab.  I also had to ante up about $300 a week, to pay for my gas.  All my fares and tips blended together, and after I paid for lease and gas, what was left was my "pay."  I made about $300 to $350 a week, but worked less hours than at the airport.  I soon became an expert at "flagging" the local bars and nightclubs of Orange County, learning which bars were the best which nights of the week.  I got really good at finding rides in places other drivers never thought of.

I switched to another taxi company, a new one, that had brand new Ford Crown Victorias, but they were natural gas powered.  So I had to go to obscure places to refill, but I got free gas for months.  Since it was a new taxi company, they had almost no business, but the lease was only $400 a week.  I lived in that taxi, and easily made enough to pay my lease, but not much more.  I was making about $200 a week, while living in my taxi, for six more months.  Then the new company got the big O.C. Airport contract, and didn't have enough drivers for a month, as the drivers from the other company switched to our company.  So I made insane money for three weeks, working back at the airport, and was able to rent a room in a house after that.  

By that time, I knew how to make money in a taxi, and I switched to another company where I could rent the cab just on the weekends, for $115 a day, for three days.  About 8-9 months into my taxi career, I rented a cheap room in inland Huntington Beach, I made about $300-$350 a week, and had four days off.  Life was pretty good.  Until Christmas 2000, when my driver's license got suspended suddenly, apparently from a clerical error at the DMV.  

I wound up working odd jobs, and was homeless on the streets, while working a restaurant job for nine months.  On Labor Day weekend, 2003, I was finally able to get my taxi permit again, and go back to taxi driving.  Once again, I was living in my cab, and working 7 days a week, and taking showers at the gym as I kept getting fatter.  It was around that time I met another cab driver named Richard Johnson.  He was a long time taxi driver, a couple years older than me (I was 38, I think), and he was this weird, funny, driver I'd run into now and then.  

At the taxi company one Monday morning, I saw a flyer by the window that said, "Taxi Driver Art Show," and asked the girl in the window about it.  She told me Richard Johnson had a little indie art gallery, and wanted any taxi drivers who did artwork to do something for an art show.  That's how I first heard of AAA Electra 99, and indie art gallery, museum, and co-op, or something like that.  I rolled by the next Friday evening, and talked to Richard, checked out the gallery.  Unlike traditional art galleries with their miles of cold, boring, white walls, Electra was crammed with all kinds of art.  Artists paid $40 a month to rent a 4 foot X 8 foot section of wall space, and they could put up anything they wanted.  There was no selection process, and only three rules, all begun because of Richard, himself.  The three rules were: 1) No fire.  2) No live animals.  And 3) No really bad smells. 

 I decided to do something for the taxi driver art show.  I wound up drawing a hand made, taxi driver board game, sort of like the game Life, but with Matchbox cars as your markers.  I can't remember what all was on it, except that one square said, "Party at Dennis Rodman's house, lose turn."  I regularly picked up people at Rodman's Newport Beach house at the time, usually after the bars had closed.  His and Carmen Electra's beach house was almost like an after hours club, so many people partied there.  My board game got a few laughs, and I soon rented a wall, and put up prints of a bunch of my poetry, along with a poem written on a toilet paper roll.  People would unroll it to read the poem, and then roll it back up.  It was my homage to the great (and terrible) bathroom wall graffiti of the 1970's, where hand drawn dick pics and odd poems were standard in any public restroom.  Before "graffiti" was spray paint tagging and colorful pieces, it was something we read while taking a dump in public.

 I came to know Richard as a weird, old school punk rocker, artist, and funny storyteller guy, and started hanging out at the gallery a little bit on weekend evenings, before the bar business got going.  He drove his taxi mostly in Anaheim and inland O.C. during the days, and I made most of my money from the H.B., Newport, and Costa Mesa bar scene fares at night.  I hung out at the new Huntington Beach Hyatt during the days, catching a few rides from there, and sleeping when I could.  Richard would roll by, and just jump in my cab and hang out, once in a while.  

Soon after I started driving the cab in 2003, the company pulled our dispatch CB radios out, and replaced them with new technology, dispatch computers.  Those computers totally screwed up the business, allowing the company to put more and more cabs on the road, mostly.  So we had fewer calls, more cabs, and A LOT LESS business per driver.  And we all had to lease the cabs weekly, so suddenly everyone was working 7 days a week.  Before that, most drivers just worked weekends, and a few worked all week.  

It got harder and harder to make a living.  From Labor Day weekend 2003, to about the same time in 2005, I had 5 complete days off.  Normal working people get two  days off a week, I took five full days off in two years, and worked every other day.  By late summer 2005, I was angry, burned out, and had gained about 150 pounds.  When you drive a taxi, you either eat too much or smoke too much.  I don't smoke.

That's when Richard made me and offer.  He bought his cab, which meant he paid $200 less a week, but was responsible for all the maintenance.  He drove mostly during the day, during the weekdays, and needed a good weekend driver to help pay for the cab.  I needed a break from driving 14-18 hours a day, 7 days a week.  The deal was that I would pay $270 a weekend, and drive his cab from about 6 pm Friday until about 4 am Monday morning.  I made most of the money I made on Friday and Saturday nights, so I could make $200 or $250 to take home, after paying him, if business was decent.  I paid him $50 a week for rent, and could live in his art gallery, which had moved to Anaheim, from Newport, by that time.  I thought the deal over for a couple of days, and went for it.  It's the location you see in the clip above, which is from 5 or 6 years later.

As Richard was helping move my clothes and stuff to the gallery to move in, only then did he ask, "Do you like cats?"  I said, "Uh... sure.  Do you have a pet cat in the gallery?"  Richard said, "Yeah... well, technically, we have 8."  Good thing I wasn't allergic to cats.  They had a cat maned Pita, and then another stray female cat that just showed up, and started hanging out in the gallery most of the time.  They called her "P.A.," for "Pita's Assistant."  P.A. had just had a litter of six kittens, in the gallery a couple weeks earlier.  So suddenly I had 4 1/2 days off, and lived alone in an indie art gallery, inside a typical small industrial unit, with 7 cats. By the time I showed up, P.A. had run Pita off, and it was me, her, and the kittens all week.  The gallery was open on Wednesday nights, and then Friday and Saturday nights each week, when local garage bands played.  

I moved in on a Wednesday, since Richard and his girlfriend were going on a trip to New Orleans for a long weekend.  So I got a couple extra days driving his cab that first week.  As it turned out, that was the weekend Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, so Richard and Michelle only made it to Chicago, and spent a weekend there, instead.  Come Monday, they got back, he took the taxi, and I suddenly was surrounded by a huge room, jam packed with art from all kinds of local, unknown artists, and a couple from Europe who Richard knew.  The bathroom was plastered with band flyers for shows at the gallery.  

I slept for most of the first two days, I was completely exhausted from the two previous years of non-stop taxi driving.  In the evening of the second day, I drew a little picture in pen, on a post-it note.  It was the first creative thing I had done in about 2 1/2 years.  The last place I lived, in 2002, I'd been playing around, doing artwork with markers.  I had been making collages of BMX, skateboard, snowboarding, and rock climbing photos, with marker doodles in between.  I was trying to find a way to shade well with markers, after trying to draw a big mural with them for my dingy room.  Instead I made several huge collages.  

I did this drawing in 2021, a reminder of my taxi driving days.  Another driver drew a skull and crossbones, with the words "Drive, Die, Cash," above the visor, in pen, in one cab.  That sums up taxi driving, so I remembered that basic idea, and drew this.  Then I lost my storage unit, including this drawing, about a month go.  Bummer. #sharpiescribblestyle

 

The next weekend, while out in the taxi, I bought a roll of big, white paper, the kind cheerleaders use to make banners in high school.  I also bought a cheap set of 12 generic markers.  I started spending my days trying different drawing styles, looking for something I liked.  I soon bought a 24 pack of regular size Sharpie markers, in all their colors.  About October of 2005, sitting in AA Electra 99, just me and P.A. and the kittens, listening to music and the rain on the roof, my Sharpie Scribble Style of shading was invented.  That link is a blog post telling how that all happened.  

My creative drive, abandoned for over two years while I tried to do nothing but make money in the taxi, and get my life back on track, was reborn.  I just started drawing for hours a day, trying whatever ideas came to me, on 4 or 5 foot long sheets of that roll of paper.  I mixed scribbles of different colors over each other, seeing what I ended up with, and figured out how to blend the colors to arrive at the final color I wanted.  At first I wrote some of my poetry real big, then did designs in the background.  

As I drew, P.A. and the kittens roamed the gallery.  There was a stage at one end, and old couches on both walls.  I slept on one of them, and once the kittens hit about 4 weeks old, they would venture from their box to my couch, and I usually woke up each morning with kittens climbing all over me.  P.A. became my best art critic.  She would jump up on the table where I drew, and sit on my drawings, while I was drawing them, in typical cat fashion.  But she only sat on the good ones, and somehow avoided the crappy drawings.  

We had a refrigerator and a microwave, and early, dial-up internet, at the gallery.  I spent a little time trying to surf the web, but mostly I drew pictures, and read some art books that were there. At one point I drank some mini whiskey bottles, and then took photos of the kittens when they fell asleep in weird positions, with the whisky bottles around them.  It looked like they had passed out at a party.  I also start taking boxes and making a kitten amusement park.  I made all kinds of little things for them to crawl through, play with, and explore.  And I just kept drawing and playing around with my "scribble style" technique with Sharpies.  Back then I was drawing things by hand, then shading with different colors, seeing what colors blended the best with the scribble style. 

The Ramones, 18" X 24", one of the first music related drawings I did, in 2016.  Hey, ho, let's go!  #sharpiescribblestyle

 

My sister had taken me to see the movie Rent when I visited them in North Carolina, during the time I lived in the gallery.  She loved the play and the movie, and was friends with Anthony Rapp, the filmaker guy in Rent.  So I did a huge RENT logo drawing for her and my niece and nephew, about 2 1/2 feet high and 5 or 6 feet long.  I put a bunch of quotes from the movie, handwritten in the background, which is something I still do today in many of my drawings.  I had a 4' X 8' section of the wall in Electra, which was part of the deal of living there.  So I kept doing drawings to hang up, and changing them out when I did new ones.

As time went on, the kittens grew up, and were sold off or given to people who came to the gallery to watch bands play.  P.A. had another litter, 4 kittens that time, after the first litter was grown and gone.  She would go out, and just wander outside, for one or two days, then show up at the door again, and want back in.  Obviously she met some male cats while out and about.  

On Wednesday nights, the gallery was open for 3-4 hours for The Spinning Head of Big Prizes, which Richard called "An open format poetry game show for people who hate poetry."  Basically, each person would spin the big wheel (visible in the video above), and do what the wheel told you to do.  It may be to sing or act something out, to tell some weird story of your life, read a poem, or to "tax Matt."  Matt was a life size dummy in coveralls, made of wadded up paper and duct tape.  "Tax," was supposedly an old jail term for beating up someone who disrespected you, or broke a rule.  So when you hit, "Tax Matt" on the wheel, you had to attack and beat up the dummy, which was lying on the floor most of the time.   That got pretty funny, at times.  Most of the people coming to the gallery were in their late teens or early 20's, usually friends of one of the local bands playing.  And artsy kids usually aren't big on violence, so some would barely hit Matt, while others would just go berserk on him like it was WWE wrestling.  After doing what the wheel said, you got to pick a prize from a box of dollar store stuff. 

Spinning Head Wednesday nights usually wound up with Richard telling crazy stories (for $1 each), the taxi driver in him felt people needed to be charged for everything.  He'd also break into a closet of his albums, and play really obscure punk bands, like Nail, and other bands I'd never heard of, loud as can be.  Since the whole business area was empty at night, no one cared how loud it got.  

Richard, his girlfriend Michelle, and  few others were also big into playing poker.  The whole Texas Hold 'em craze was in full swing then, so Wednesday nights usually ended with me falling asleep on my couch and a few artists smoking and playing poker around the main table.  Michelle usually walked away with most everyone's money, she was the sleeper poker shark in the crew.  

I just kept drawing every day, and walking a bit, so I lost some weight while there.  But I ordered way too many pizzas, since there wasn't a stove to cook, and I got sick of microwave food.  But my health improved quite a bit, which was good. 

Kurt Cobain, drawn for my first, and only, solo art show, in November 2017.  The show was at a great indie music store, Earshot Music, in Winston-Salem, NC, and Phred the owner, used this drawing as a flyer.  The drawing sold an hour after going up on the wall, the day before the art show.  I started getting a lot of requests for drawings after that.  #sharpiescribblestyle

 

After about three months of drawing the scribble style, I moved to the smaller, ultra fine point Sharpies, which worked much better, allowed me to do much more detail, fade colors well, and they lasted a lot longer.  I lost some weight, walking a bit every day, and was feeling a lot better just because I was being creative, and not as stressed out from working 7 days a week.  But I wasn't making much money, and couldn't make enough to actually rent a normal room, or my own apartment, and get back to "normal life."   

So in June of 2006, I went back to working full time as a taxi driver, but this time I had a 12" X 18" art pad, and my Sharpies, in the cab, and would draw while sitting in front of hotels, or waiting other places.  That helped a lot.  I never could make a decent living in the cab, but I was less stressed out, generally, since I was drawing a lot. 

I left a bunch of my drawings at the gallery, when I moved out.  I also lost two sketch pads worth of drawings that I left on a bus about a year later.  While they were all in my #sharpiescribblestyle, they were totally different types of drawings then I've done since.  But I invented, and then learned the basic color combos, of my scribble style, while living at Electra.  I kept drawing on and off since.  Then in 2015, while living in North Carolina, I started drawing people, leading to the drawings I've been selling for the last 5-6 years.   

This is my personal favorite, of all the 100+ large drawings I've done since 2015.  Harley Quinn/Tainted Love.  I had to sell this one cheap in Richmond, VA, to get a motel room, after a week long hospital stay.  It was in a gallery in the Richmond Arts District last I saw it.  #sharpiescribblestyle

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